Traffic was heavy and it ended up taking me over 45 minutes to drive the 8 miles to the car dealer where I had made an after-school appointment for routine maintenance yesterday. I had just settled down into the waiting room when the service coordinator came to find me. "We're backed up in the shop," he reported, "so why don't we get you into a loaner and keep your car overnight? We can get to your vehicle first thing tomorrow."
"Sure," I agreed. Although I dreaded having to make the drive again the next day, the prospect of doing so in a new car took a lot of the sting away. A few minutes later I was in a 2024 Subaru Outback with 118 miles on the odometer and all the bells and whistles you can imagine.
Before I left the parking lot I had paired my phone and set up a driver profile that used facial recognition to adjust the seat and the radio presets to my personal specifications. And we were living large this morning as we rolled into the school parking garage in that new car. "We should buy it," Heidi sighed. But we agreed that our own car is very nice, as well as perfectly maintained by the dealer. It has low mileage and almost every feature that newer model offers. Plus? It's paid off.
So it was without remorse this afternoon that I piloted the loaner back to its home to pick up our good ol' car. Just as before the traffic was terrible, but I still used cruise control to maintain 25 mph on a heavily policed lane. As I approached a stoplight, I was momentarily distracted by a flock of geese on the lawn of the private school campus on my right. Just then, the car beeped a warning I had never heard before. "Keep your eyes on the road" the dash display admonished.
"How the hell?" I wondered until I realized that the profile recognition feature must have been watching my face all along. I wasn't sure if that was creepy or cool, but I was glad that I didn't have to decide, because a little while later I was driving my own car home.
No comments:
Post a Comment